Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/68

 54 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

every single quantity of goods must at a given moment be in some way related to the total quantity of goods. The just price for any good, which by itself could never be recognized, would be that given by this relation. If we take m to be the single sum of money and g the single good, we can form the equation

J__^_ G~M

Thus we get an objective proportion which takes the place of the absent qualitative relation. By the introduction of the mathemat- ical functional symbol which serves to represent the actual forma- tion of price the equation becomes applicable to every case and

S ift remains mathematically just \ i. e.,-^=^.. The difficulty that

none of us, not even the most theoretical of economists, in paying a certain price ever thinks of the total quantity of money or goods is very cleverly overcome by Simmel. The two denominators vanish from our consciousness, the narrowness of which leaves room but for the concrete individual case ; thus only the numerators of the fraction good and price appear to us to be effective, while the total quantities of both remain outside our consciousness. The reason why this measuring function of money is so difficult to recognize and is denied by so many lies in the fact that historical realization has left a double character in money, that, besides its value as gold or silver it has its value as a function. While former theorists recognized only a tend- ency toward a development of the functional character and a recession of the substance character, Simmel considers the func- tion, not the substance, to be essential to money, and goes so far as to call its substantial character a detriment to pure monev. The evolution of money must have the tendency to give up sub- stance more and more, 1 but from technical reasons this can per- haps never be anything more than a regulative principle, the end of which may never be reached.

Money as well as every other economic phenomenon is regulated by the economic principle, the principle of economy and construction of energy and substance. More and more

1 Vide VON SCHEET, " Der Begriff des Geldes in seiner historisch-okonomischen Entwicklung," in HlLDEBRAND's/a/fcr^V^rr (1866), Vol. 1, p. 16.